Introducing Difference Tones to the Flute Choir

I am always looking for more effective ways to enable the flute choir that I conduct to play in tune. In the past I had used warmup exercises that focus on ensemble intonation, but at the beginning of this year’s rehearsal season, I tried to use sections of pieces to do the same thing. This was not so successful, so I have gone back to using intonation-focused warmups that are targeted at situations in the pieces we are working on.

These mostly consist of having part of the group play scales and arpeggios against the rest of the group playing a drone, then switching the groups so all have a chance to practice. The newest twist is working on difference tones in order to ‘fine-tune’ the group’s sense of intonation even more. Please excuse the pun! I got the idea after reading about it on Flutelist, and decided I had to try it with my group!

Difference tones, some people use the term resultant tones, are a phenomenon that occur within your ear as a result of hearing two tones of different frequencies. All pitches vibrate at a different frequency. When the difference between two frequencies equals the tone associated with a different frequency, that creates a difference tone in your ear. If you’ve ever noticed an annoying buzz in your ear when playing high harmonies with another player, you were are hearing difference tones. When the interval formed by the regular tones is perfectly in tune, the difference tone will sound like a real note that you can identify, because it will also be in tune. Very cool!!!

I first had two choir members sitting at opposite ends of the group play a short excerpt to introduce the concept of difference tones to the group and make them aware of what they should be listening for. Some people’s eyes got very big as the ‘buzz’ of the difference tones went through their heads. I then explained why we would be doing this as a group and why it was important to work on as a choir. Besides improving our ability to tune intervals, when the group is playing intervals of a minor third in high enough registers, the difference tone that is created is a major third below the lower note, filling out the harmony in the listener’s ear and creating that lovely, rich, ringing sound that makes a small group sound twice as large and much, much grander; always my goal for our group.

Half of the group played the A Major scale while the other half played the C Major scale. We tried it for two octaves, a good test of player’s abilities to play beautiful high notes and a great opportunity to create some ‘major buzz.’ It was a little painful, but the point came across wonderfully. Everybody’s ears and brains were a little jangly after that, but people were pretty excited to have learned something new. At the next rehearsal the things went a little more smoothly and the overall intonation is markedly improved. YAY!!

You can read more about playing difference tones on flutes and much more about characteristics of great flute playing as taught by the legendary William Kincaid in John Krell’s book, Kincaidiana. This is one of those books all people serious about playing flute should read, one of the Flute Bibles. Thank you Flutelisters for reminding me of this!

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